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Carolee Schneemann, "Disruptive Consciousness" in the Performance Programme, 2008.
Video: Anne Quirynen

Carolee Schneemann (USA)

In the 1960s, pioneering performance artist Carolee Schneemann was associated both with the Fluxus movement and the Judson Dance Theater. Her work, which transcends genre boundaries, was initially met with little sympathy and much criticism: the Fluxus movement soon excommunicated her and the feminist artists were shaking their heads. Schneemann's experimental film 'Fuses' (1964 - 1967) is considered to be the first feminist erotic film. The central themes of Schneemann's work with film, sculptures and performances are gender roles, sexuality, war, memory and death.

"Meat Joy' is an early multimedia performance from the artist's time with the Judson Dance Theater, an ecstatic mix of sex, pop music and raw meat.

"Interior Scroll' is a solo work made in 1975 which deals with the artist's experiences of sexism and exclusion in the art world. The female body, or more precisely the vagina, becomes a site of knowledge. Carolee Schneemann extracts a carefully rolled scroll from her vagina, unrolls it proceeds to read from it. The text is part poem, part manifesto and ironically reflects her experiences with male colleagues from the art scene. "Interior Scroll - The Cave" is a collective re-enactment of this performance, which was not documented on film.

Disruptive Consciousness
Performance Lecture by Carolee Schneemann (USA)

In her 'performative lecture' Disruptive Consciousness, Schneemann addressed resistance, radicalization and current art issues through a history of her own work as it was activated by feminist research. The performative lecture will unravel certain misapprehensions and deformed conventions surrounding theoretical assumptions of the 1970's.

Carolee Schneemann: "Meat Joy" (1964).
image courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, (EAI), New York